About Me

I'm a mom with two teens, finding the time to create every day. I love color, whimsy, liberated quilting, soothing hand knits and now handspinning! I love to read all my comments, but don't always have time to answer them. Please know that I appreciate each and every one. Please do not use my words or photos without my permission. Thank you for visiting!

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June 2010

June 29, 2010

My foray into fabric dyeing was just marvelous! I ordered Dharma Trading Company's Fiber Reactive Dyes and several types of fabric to sample. I was inspired online by a couple of blog posts: Melody- The Lazy Dyer and Karen at Stitching Life. It took some time to gather all the supplies, but I'm so glad I did! I did plastic bag dyeing for almost all, except for one tub dye experiment. I like the bag dyeing most of all. It's easy and you get very interesting results.

I started off by ripping my fabric into smaller pieces. I didn't measure anything, I just made them into something like fat quarters or fat eighths, depending on the fabric. I had on hand Dharma fabrics: Pimatex Cotton #PTC58, Bleached Linen #LIN, Combed Cotton Lawn #CCL, CottonVoile #CVO, Bleached Harem Cloth #BHC, Dharma Silk Gauze 3mm #SG45. Since I bought the harem cloth to use for my bases for the Spirit Cloth class, I just ripped some very small pieces to try it out for dyeing. Most will be kept in its natural state. I found out that linen and silk don't like to be ripped, so used the rotary cutter. I also had a few skeins of light colored embroidery thread that I soaked and threw into the bags too.

I kept the fabrics separated in the soaking tubs (for the soda ash- also known as sodium carbonate- 1/4 c soda ash to 1 gallon of water- they just need to get wet- don't have to soak for long). You can get the soda ash at a pool store or hardware store. Above you can see that I prepared all the bags with one piece of each type of fabric in each. As it got down to the end, each bag didn't have all 6 types. As I neared the end of the dyeing session I had leftover dye that I wanted to use, so I ripped more fabric, soaked it for a bit in the soda ash and then used up the leftovers.

Then the fun began and I started pouring in the dye. At first I thought I might measure out by the tablespoon and even take notes. Ha! I ended up mixing the colors in the plastic liquid measuring cup- about 1/2- 1 cup total of the dye liquid and then pouring it into a bag. Sometimes, I didn't like the color so I would add more of something else. Sometimes I poured the excess dye out of a bag and added something else to it to change the color for the next bag. Totally unscientific and totally fun!

Sunday was a hot, hot day here, so the bags were left to "bake" in the sun for about 4 hours. The rinsing was the least fun part. Next time I might combine more colors for rinsing. I was afraid dye would transfer, so I was rinsing them by hand one bag at a time. Took forever. Here are the first couple bags worth after rinsing, but before washing them out in the machine.

Above: Isn't it interesting how the different fabrics and thread took the dye differently. That orange silk was totally unexpected with the green cottons! Below are the others all ready to be machine washed. I have a front loading washer and washed each batch with about 2 teaspoons of Synthrapol. I didn't have any bleeding when they were ironed while still wet. Below are all the other colors ready for the machine.

And here's the good part! Just look at what came out in the wash. First I've arranged them by type of fabric.

Above: Dharma Pimatex Cotton #PTC58

Above: Dharma Bleached Linen #LIN

Above: Dharma Combed Cotton Lawn #CCL

Above: Dharma CottonVoile #CVO

Above: Dharma Bleached Harem Cloth #BHC

Above: Dharma Silk Gauze 3mm #SG45

Above: Dharma Pimatex Cotton, tub dyed and scrunched, using the last of the dye. This piece is very "moody" and not really my style, but I'm sure I'll find something to do with it!

The next photos are arranged by color and within each photo are usually 1-4 bags worth of fabric. I had a hard time matching the dye lots back up because the different fabrics took the dye differently. There were at least a couple of sets of very similar colors from different bags.

Things I learned from my first dyeing day:

It was a very long, tiring day and into the next one to get all the pieces ironed. Next time I will prepare all the fabric and fill the bags one day, prepare dyes and do the dyeing another day and maybe do the washout and ironing another day. One thing I learned is that silk does badly if exposed to soda ash for a long time, so I had to do the washout at about 8 pm and that was too late to start that whole process. Next time, dye the silk separately or pull out the silk pieces to washout earlier than the cotton and linen.

I much prefer the bag dyeing. Do very little manipulation of the fabric if you like the variety in colors and the light spots. To make it more uniform, but still have a suede look, go ahead and smoosh it around a bit. I like the suede look a lot!

Stick with the smaller pieces, fat quarters are good for this. Each bag had approximately 1 yard of fabric total, but you could easily do 2 yards per bag.

To make the silk have more variety across a surface you might have to do the tub dyeing. All the silk came out totally uniform in texture. Next time we want to try my wool (acid) dyes on the silk because it takes the dye more predictably that way.

You could make a very lovely set of colors just with the three primaries- Lemon Yellow, Fuchsia and Turquoise, but the added colors were nice to have. I made 16 cups of dye all together and dyed a lot of fabric! There was excess dye so I could have done more fabric too. I would make one cup of each color for a more manageable dyeing session.

To make lighter colors, make the dye solutions weaker- try 1 teaspoon dye in 2 cups of water. Sometimes I took the regular strength and added water before putting it in the bag. Same thing, less reproducible.

June 25, 2010

I'm taking an online workshop with Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth. It's been quite an eyeopener and an interesting way to learn. It's my first online class of any kind. We have a private blog to post photos and comments and there's so much wonderful work going on there! These are my bases that I made last week. With the last few busy days I haven't made progress on them yet, but I hope to this weekend. Meanwhile, dyes and fabric just arrived from Dharma and I can't wait to try Karen's dye technique- go check it out, it's amazing! If I could make some samples half as beautiful I'd be a happy camper.

June 24, 2010

I don't think I've mentioned this project yet, but it's been going on for at least 6 months. A small group was formed from members of my quilt guild; there are 12 of us in all. We call ourselves The Undercover Quilters and it's a book/quilt group. We decided that our first book choice would be interpreted in quilts and then we'd read and discuss other books in the months it would take to finish the quilts. As it turns out, we've decided to go slowly on the quilts, taking nearly a year to finish them. However, we've also read lots of other interesting titles in the meantime. You can see a sampling of our book club selections in the left hand sidebar.

Anyway, each of us has interpreted the first book, The Good Good Pig by Sy Montgomery, in different ways. It's been so interesting to see them evolve at our monthly meetings. The book is a true story about a piglet who was saved from ending up on a dinner plate. He, Christopher Hogwood, had many adventures in his long life, but I chose to focus my quilt on the hens that also lived on the farm. They were called "The Ladies" and that always made me think of them as very proper. I chose to make my ladies with fancy feathers, hats and purses. They'll eventually have pearl necklaces too! The latest stage has been to add the flowers in the foreground. When I'm done with the applique I'm going to machine quilt it. It's due to be done for our guild's annual show in August, so I've got to get to work! We'll pick a new book to interpret in cloth in September with the intention of finishing them next summer.

June 21, 2010

We've been gone for a few days on our semiannual trip to Portland. This time we got an incredibly beautiful morning of sun and had to head up the hill to the International Rose Test Garden. It was just amazing to see all those roses in bloom.

This one little snatch of sun made up for the rest of the gray and drizzly weekend. We did manage to enjoy ourselves by walking the whole of downtown on Saturday, Powell's, the Pearl, Toy Story for some and a class with Jared Flood for me! My class was a workshop on seamless sweaters and I don't have any knitting to show for it, but I learned some cool tips and feel a lot more confident on starting my own Elizabeth Zimmerman inspired sweater. Now we're back home on the sunny side of the mountains for what promises to be the first real summer-like weather of the year!

June 12, 2010

Same routine, different quilt. I LOVE this quilt! Yes, I have to shout it out. The big stitch hand quilting was wonderful (except on that really thick denim in the outer border) and I will be doing that again for sure. I loved using the old clothes and will be doing that again. Yes, this fabric snob has finally seen what the long time traditional quilters have known all along. You feel the connection to the person who wore that garment. Oh, I don't think it will stop me from fabric shopping, but I may have to start saving more of the kid's old clothes.

Look for this one at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show too! By the way, did you know that if you are looking for a particular quilter's work, they have books at the info area behind the Stitchin' Post where you can look it up.

June 11, 2010

Collaborative Chicks #3:: Liberated Wedding Ring is finally done. I just had the binding to do and got it finished last week. In fact, all 9 of my Sisters Quilt Show quilts are done- except for the labels.

I asked my quilter to do a more traditional style of machine quilting with feathers. I like how it came out and my quilter was relieved to have a pattern that was a little more controlled than some of the others I've asked her to do.

I had to get a little more creative with this one to photograph as it's so big (76" square). Now I know I can get photos of large quilts when I'm home alone!

It's very scrappy- my favorite kind of quilt. It's also all for us! I'm sure it will be very cozy this Christmas.

June 10, 2010

The weather is chilly, but the knitting is fine. I saw this pattern come out recently on Knitty and couldn't wait to start. I had a lovely skein of lightweight alpaca that's been languishing for 5 years. Little did I know this would be the perfect pattern for it. Annis is very quick and so satisfying with just the right amount of lace. This was also my first time doing nupps which are really easy if you've got pointy needles. I'm so in love with this one, I've started another!

June 07, 2010

Done! This piece sat around for quite a while before I decided that it wasn't finished without a binding. I've stepped out of the box a little with this one- raw edges, woven strips (the top weaving is from Jude, I did the smaller one below), use of silk and no batting. I just couldn't leave the outer edges raw. It seemed too fragile that way. With the binding, it's a lovely soft bit of a story quilt and really makes my heart sing.

The wonderful indigo moon is from Glennis at Shibori Girl. The silk below was challenging to use, but I love the contrast.

And, for the curious, here's the back. Some of the stitching you see on the front was done before I put it on a backing, so it isn't seen here.

The Guardians of the Ribbon came to Bend over the weekend for our Heaven Can Wait fundraiser for breast cancer. It was so much fun to see these trucks up close and get to sign one myself! If you happen to get out to see these trucks look for my name on the truck named "Karen".

Yesterday, Chloe and I participated in the 5K walk and had a great time. For me, this marks nearly 3 years since my diagnosis with breast cancer and just over 2 years from the end of the major portion of treatment!